


Coalesce

by perihadion



Series: Shadowboxing [8]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: "to your love" by fiona apple vibes, Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Mutual Pining, Resolved Romantic Tension, baby yoda is a pistachio, cara is a soft-boiled egg, din is a soft-boiled egg, i wrote this instead of studying for my japanese exam lol, please sort your shit out the pining is bad for business
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:29:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/perihadion
Summary: After avoiding each other for weeks Din and Cara find themselves in each other's orbits and decide to be honest for once.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune & Greef Karga, Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Greef Karga & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Shadowboxing [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1599208
Comments: 35
Kudos: 207





	Coalesce

**Author's Note:**

> Do not comment with Omera hate.

_See, I love you. But love is a feeling we can experience, yet never explain. You can explain the concept. You love that which you can lose._

— _Solaris_ (1972), Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky

*

The light from the stars streaked along the viewport like smears of paint as Din took the Razor Crest into hyper-space. There was something calm about this transitional moment, as if they were suspended in time with no past and no future — just hanging in the present tense, able to take a breath. Moments like this were rare. He let out a deep breath, put the ship on autopilot, and turned to the Child, handing him the silver ball which was for some reason his favourite toy.

The Child took it and stared at him, inscrutable. During quiet moments Din often wondered what the Child understood. He was so like a human child but there was a quiet understanding in his gaze at times. He wondered if the Child would ever speak, if it would remember anything from this time in its life, if it would remember where it came from and be able to tell him. He reached out a hand and stroked the Child’s forehead gently with his index finger. The Child closed his eyes and cooed.

Din thought about the reality that he would have to separate from the Child in the end, and his heart ached. But he had no choice except to find the Child’s people. They would be parted one way or another, and he would prefer it to be that way rather than through death. Because the Child would outlive him, that was certain. It was better to find his people sooner rather than later. Din would remember the Child for the rest of his life but the best thing he could do for the Child was to ensure that he was at most a transitional moment in the long arc of the Child’s life. Hundreds of years from now the Child might remember him at most as a shadow flitting across his earliest memories.

He turned back to the viewport, and thought of Cara.

She was right, he knew that she was right. They were like two satellites which had glanced off each other, neither realising that they were on a collision course until the moment it happened. But he had let himself believe that he could stay in that moment with her — that they could have this thing which was unanticipated and unspoken, and fix it in the transitional moment between space and hyper-space.

But nothing stays fixed; if that were possible they never would have got to this point. Each decision that they had made had seemed infinitesimal, an imperceptible step towards the edge, and they should have known better than to be surprised when they found themselves at it.

He felt something tug at his cape, and when he looked down the Child was trying to climb into his lap. He leaned down and picked the Child up, putting him on his knee. The Child looked up at him, and reached out for his chest plate. Din tilted his head. The Child placed his hand over Din’s chest, right over his heart, and closed his eyes.

“ _Ad’ika_ ,” Din whispered, gently taking the Child’s hand and removing it, “it’s not that type of hurt.”

The Child opened his eyes again, his ears drooping. Din gathered him up in his arms and held him as tight as he could without hurting him. He knew that he would have to release the Child one day but for now he wanted to hold this moment as long as he could and the Child, who was often squirming and curious, seemed to understand, because he just buried his face in Din’s cowl as Din wrapped his cape around him.

*

Greef entered the office with a large bottle of firewater and put it on the desk in front of Cara along with two glasses. “I want to have a talk with you, kid.” Something about the tone in his voice gave her the impression she was not going to enjoy this talk, but she just shrugged as if to say, ‘go ahead’. He pulled up a chair and sat across from her, picking up the bottle and pouring a measure into each glass.

“I have never asked what is going on between you and Mando,” he said, screwing the cap back on the bottle methodically, “because it is none of my business.” Cara picked up her glass and clinked it against his before taking a mouthful. She definitely was not going to enjoy this conversation. “And,” Greef continued, catching her eye, “I’m not going to ask now because I’m not blind. What I _am_ going to do,” he picked up his own glass and tilted it at her, “is get you drunk and see what spills out.”

Cara shrugged, feigning as much nonchalance as she could muster in this moment, and said, “I’m an expensive date.”

“I know,” Greef said, indicating the bottle of firewater in front of him.

They sat in silence and drank at each other for a long time. Cara knew that he was waiting for her to blink, and she refused to give him the satisfaction. As far as she was concerned her dalliance with Din was just that and it was over. Done. Past tense.

At length, Greef said, “So, I take it you broke up.”

“We didn’t break up,” she said. “We weren’t together.”

He nodded, as if to say ‘whatever you say’. The alcohol was starting to hit her now, and she felt like laying into him about how it was really none of his concern — though, underneath her righteous indignation she also recognised that Greef cared about her a great deal.

“So, you didn’t break up,” he said. “But something happened.” She shrugged, but it was a little harder to hide that pain under a paper thin layer of bravado. “You want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, grabbing the bottle and pouring herself another measure. “I called it,” she said, avoiding his gaze so as to maintain an air of not giving a fuck.

“Can I ask why?” he asked and, at her look, “I’m just curious.”

She shrugged, “It was unprofessional.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, leaning back in his chair and chuckling. “I forgot about what a consummate professional you are.”

She felt exposed, and eyed the bottle again. She needed to pace herself, but she detested being even remotely sober in this moment. “It was _messy_ ,” she insisted. “And,” against her better judgement she added, “it wasn’t ever going to go anywhere.”

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere,” Greef said.

“Yeah, well,” she said, staring at a pile of paperwork on the desk which had not been touched since it was deposited there. “You get thinking about these things. Things like, ‘what the fuck am I doing sleeping with someone who can’t even get all the way naked with me?’” She downed her drink and Greef picked up the bottle to pour her some more. Since she had started, she decided to tell him the thing which she hoped would be the end of this: “And I have to work with the guy, and — not that it was a relationship, because it wasn’t — all of my relationships end catastrophically.” She shrugged, and she felt this time how absolutely unconvincing it was. “I just didn’t want to go there again.”

Greef considered her for a moment, and then took a sip of his own drink. He put the glass on the desk and said, “You know that realistically one of you is going to die before that happens.” She continued to stare at the paperwork. Whose job was it to take care of that anyway? It couldn’t possibly be hers, right? Greef tapped his glass, “Probably him, since he’s the one with what’s left of the Empire up his ass.” Cara rolled her eyes, but Greef continued, “And if that happens you’re going to have to live the rest of your life wondering why you didn’t take what you could while you had the chance.”

Cara wondered if he remembered how Moff Gideon had described her, that he had mentioned the location of her birth. In truth she tried not to think of Alderaan and the loss of its incredible beauty — all the mountains and seas that she had meant to see with her own eyes, and the people she had meant to see them with, obliterated before she made time to do it. Her mother, her father. Her sister, her cousins. Her first girlfriend. All cosmic dust, returned to the forge of the stars. She wondered if the atoms which had made them all up would ever coalesce again into a form as breathtaking as Alderaan and its people had been — like the beskar passing through the forge, changed but not unmade.

“You think I don’t know what it means to live with regret?” she asked, quietly. “I’m an expert at it. I know exactly what it’s like to live with things unsaid, and places unvisited.” She threw back what was left in her glass, knowing that she was reaching the point of drunkenness where she was in danger of saying how she really felt and no longer caring. “You know what it taught me?” she asked, looking straight at Greef. “It taught me that I can.”

“That’s a terrible lesson,” he said, as if he also knew something of grief and pain — and, in the wake of the Empire’s fall, who didn’t?

“Look,” she said, desperate to put this conversation to bed, “I get what you’re trying to do here, and I appreciate it — I do. But you don’t get it. I have been here before and it does not work. I can’t do the relationship thing. I’m just so —”

Broken.

“I’m not built for it.”

They fell into silence again, and Cara stared at the bottle of firewater. The light refracting through it reminded her of the warmth and glinting metal of the Armorer’s forge.

“You know,” she said. “I asked the Armorer what would happen if he broke the creed. You know what she said?” She glanced up at Greef. “He would become _dar’manda_ , forsaken. It’s a fate worse than death.”

“That’s a bit melodramatic,” Greef said.

“Yeah, well,” she waved her hand, “it’s what they believe.” She took a deep breath and looked him right in the eye. “Don’t you get it? He could never show his face to me, ever. I could never —” she hated that she was saying this but the words just spilled out of her, “I could never see him smile, or cry. I could never read his feelings. I could never look him in the eye and know what he was thinking. There would always be something missing.” She pressed her lips together, absolutely refusing to cry in front of Greef. “Or he could give up his identity, his way of life, his religion, his soul. And I’m not having anyone do that for me.” Least of all Din.

Greef shrugged, “Or you could just get married.”

She stared at him. “Are you out of your mind?”

He smiled as if to suggest maybe he was. “I mean,” he said, leaning forward to grab the bottle. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s _insane_ ,” she said. He raised his eyebrows, and she started listing reasons: “One, we’re not in a relationship.”

“Sure,” he said, in a tone of voice which suggested that it was not at all sure.

“Two, we’re not exclusive.”

“That’s hardly a pre-requisite.”

She glared at him. “Three, I don’t even know what the guy looks like.”

He swallowed the contents of his glass and poured them both another drink. “Now, that’s the problem to begin with.”

“Greef, come on,” she said. “It’s not just the helmet. It’s going to end badly one way or the other and I’d rather not be married to the guy when the whole thing implodes.”

He pointed at her, “You know what the one thing that actually matters here is?” He paused to take a sip, and continued. “You’re in love with him and you’re terrified — which means you want it to work.”

Cara’s heart squeezed. “I’m not in love with him,” she said. She wondered how long it would be before anyone noticed that Greef was missing, and where she could stash the body.

“Well, you’ve been pining away for the past two months and drinking yourself stupid every other night over _something_. It’s driving me up the wall.”

“It’s not — love,” she said. “It’s inertia. Look, it’s a process. I’m handling it.”

“Well, could you get a firmer grip?” he asked. “You’re impossible to be around right now.” She glared at him, but he continued. “Look, I know you’ve been round the block a few times and things have ended badly for you before. But I get the impression this is different and you’re shit-scared. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She had nothing to say to that. Greef nodded at the clock, and put his empty glass down on the desk. At last the conversation was over but she didn’t feel any relief; she felt more stirred up than she had at the start, and the alcohol was hitting her hard now. He got up to leave, but paused at the door to add one last thought. “Who do you think a guy like that has anyway?” he said. “You and the kid are all he’s got. There’s no Mandalorian bride waiting for him. His tribe’s been scattered. He’s got nobody.”

He didn’t wait for her response, and Cara was glad, because she was already choking back tears before he closed the door.

*

The Child pressed his face to the glass of the viewport as they approached Nevarro. He cooed a little and looked back at his caregiver brightly and Din wondered if he recognised the planet. It had been weeks and he had made no headway in finding the Child’s people; it was starting to feel hopeless and he felt that he should try a different tack. But what that might look like, he had no idea.

He looked at the planet before him. It was not ideal, but he would have to find lodging there for a few days. Aside from the usual need to refuel and find work, he was carrying some injuries that needed rest and attention. The thought of spending any more time on Nevarro was unappealing to him but he had no choice. In his brief visits over the past few months he had been successful in avoiding Cara — and he suspected that she had aided him in that effort — but it seemed inevitable that their paths would cross again. He felt sure that she was still working for Greef, who would have told him if she had left. Maybe enough time had passed that they could begin again.

The Child was watching him, no doubt wondering what the cause of the hesitation was. “Come on,” Din said, taking the Child and putting him in his lap for the landing. “Let’s go see some old friends.”

It was late afternoon when they landed. Din decided to get the worst part out of the way, and headed for the cantina. He walked slowly, not just for the Child’s sake, but also because of the shooting pain in his knee which accompanied every step. The injury was an aggravating reminder of his own frailty, his mortality, which added to his concern for the Child, who he would not allow to heal him out of concern for the effect his mysterious power seemed to have on him when he used it.

The cantina was full when he entered, and Greef was arguing with another hunter. There was no sign of Cara but the door to the office was closed. He waited for Greef to deal with his business and then approached him.

“Mando,” Greef greeted him. “Take a seat.”

“I’d rather not,” Din said. He knew that if he sat it would be impossible for him to conceal his injury when he stood and the last thing he wanted was for every hunter on Nevarro to know that he was in a weakened state. “I’m not staying long. I need work, and lodging for a few days.” He paused. “Not here. Somewhere else.”

Greef eyed him for a moment. “I’ll arrange a room,” he said. “When you are ready to leave, you can have your pick of the bounty pucks.” He looked at the Child at Din’s feet. “Is the Child hungry?”

“I’ll get him something at the bazaar,” Din said. He turned to leave and then, as an afterthought, said, “Thank you.”

*

 _while you are away, my heart comes undone_  
_slowly unravels in a ball of yarn_  
_the devil collects it with a grin_  
_our love, in a ball of yarn_  
_so when you come back we’ll have to make new love_

— “Unravel”, Björk

Cara was bone-tired as she headed back to her rooms. She had started brawling on the side of her enforcement work to burn up some of her spare energy, and fire, and rage. The hunters had been well-behaved recently, and she was bored and restless.

She paused at her door, and something inside her made her turn around. As soon as she saw him she felt like she had been stabbed in the gut. He was just standing there, shimmering in the low light of the evening, with the Child sleeping in his arms.

“Long time no see,” she said quietly, and he nodded. He approached her and then passed her. He stopped at the door next to hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you still lived at the cantina.” She realised that he was staying in the rooms next to hers.

“Ah,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.” She looked at the bundle in his arms. “How is he?”

Din looked from the Child to her and said, “Well.” She nodded.

They stood there for what felt like hours, each waiting for the other to do something to end the interaction. Now that he was standing in front of her, she didn’t want to just let him vanish into his rooms and walk out of her life again. She hesitated, and then she said, “Do you want to come in?” He looked up at her, and she added, “Just for a little bit. To catch up.”

He said nothing for a long time, and then he asked, “Is that a good idea?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said.

He nodded. “But I would like to,” he said.

*

She found a basket for him to put the Child to bed in; she was surprised that he didn’t wake once as Din put him down and tucked him in. He produced something soft from a pocket and placed it in the Child’s hand. When he stepped back she saw that it was a stuffed frog. He seemed to think for a second, and then placed the basket in the adjoining room and closed the door. She wondered if he thought they were going to fight again.

He looked around the room and sat at the table where she ate her meals. She noticed that he was moving stiffly, especially when he took the seat. “You’re injured,” she observed.

“Yes,” he said. “It will heal.” She walked over to take the seat across from him. “How have you been?” he asked.

She laughed. “Miserable,” she said, matter-of-factly. He nodded and they lapsed into silence. Cara looked him over; she could see that he was tired. Stressed. Frustrated. He was probably carrying more than just the one injury. She wondered what he had been through since they parted ways. Her heart ached. Seeing him wasn’t awkward, it was just painfully sad.

“You were right,” he said at length. “It was the right choice.”

She looked at him, and felt like she was breaking into a thousand pieces. “You think so?” she said. “I’ve been wondering.”

“What other choice was there?” he said. She looked away.

“I don’t know,” she said. She swallowed. “It’s really unfair that you can read everything on my face,” she laughed. “And you’re just,” she waved a hand in front of her face, “blank.” He stood, with a grunt, and she wondered if he was going to leave — she felt she deserved it if he did — but he simply turned the lights off so that they were in pitch dark. He sat across from her again and she heard him set his helmet on the table.

“Now it’s fair,” he said, in that warm, human voice shot through with tiredness.

She closed her eyes and bowed her head. “I don’t know what other choice there was,” she said. “I just know that seeing you again —” she took a deep breath. “Now that you’re here I don’t want you to leave.”

He said nothing, but she felt him find her hand, and tug the glove off. Then bare fingers brushed over the top of her hand, before pulling away again.

“And judging from the way things have been since you left I —” she swallowed: the conversation was agonising, “I seem to need you,” she said, recalling the words he had said to her the last time they spoke. “Not just that, I —”

She couldn’t say it. She clenched her jaw, frustrated with herself, but then she felt him take her hand again and pull her to her feet, and then his mouth was crashing down on hers and she knew he understood what she was trying to say. He gripped her so tight she thought he was trying to make her a part of himself, and she put her arms around him, gripping his shoulder with one hand and pressing the other flat against his back plate as she returned his kiss with as much fire as she could muster from deep inside herself. There was a kind of relief in being honest for once, with herself and with him, as she pressed kisses along his jaw and his neck. He was pulling at her armour and her clothes and she pushed him in the direction of the bed.

She was mindful of his injuries as she slowly stripped him of his armour and his clothes. As he pulled her back in to him she pressed her forehead against his, and then pressed her mouth to the same spot, tasting the salt of his skin. Now that she could, all she wanted was to touch his face, his hair, his neck. It was soft, it was so soft, and in this moment she wasn’t scared at all.

*

Din woke before Cara. In the dark he couldn’t see her at all, but he felt her. Her leg was thrown over him, as if to prevent him from being able to leave, and her hand rested on his chest, right over his heart. And everything still hurt, but less than it had before.

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is the quickest I've ever turned a piece of writing out in my life. For once my adhd is working for me (it's not).
> 
> Come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/theoceanblooms) or [tumblr](http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com)! If you really liked this fic, it would be lovely if you could [reblog](https://www.tumblr.com/reblog/190369704074/9ncvchCp) on tumblr.


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